http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THERE comes a point when Henry David Thoreau and other hermit
philosophers seem logical. Mr. Bush has pushed me ever so close to my Walden
Pond. His authorization of federal funds for limited stem-cell research via
televised speech with barren Crawford, Texas in the background was
foreboding. If tumbleweed had rolled by as a cattle skulls rested in peace on
the windowsill, the moment's ethical significance would have been captured.
Lost hope needs a bleak scenario.

Approval for research with already extracted stem cells was a politically
expedient one, in theory. There will be no destruction of embryos and
Christopher Reeve, the B movie actor turned god of the left since his
equestrian accident, can relax.

But, for all of the decision's touted political expediency, it is a struggle
to determine whom Mr. Bush appeased. His base wonders why he started down
this path. Meanwhile, Patricia Ireland and companies such as Advanced Cell
Technology complained instantly about the need for more embryos, more federal
bucks, more!

The polls show a split public on this issue (although I question any poll
that does not prescreen participants for their understanding of stem-cell
research). Tax dollars will be used for something that is spiritually
objectionable to at least half the population. What are those of us who
conscientiously object to the use of public funds for a shove down the
slippery slope of tinkering with genetically complete beings to do?

Those who believe the issue ends here are positively daft. We will move from
research on already dead embryos to research on abandoned embryos. Then on
to embryos from women have reached menopause. It will never end.

The reason we find ourselves in the "But they're just going to throw the
embryos away!" mode is because we trotted down that in vitro fertilization
road. We had promises then about limitations on creation and use of embryos.
Those promises have been breached. Advanced Cell Technology has been paying
women $4,000 a pop, as it were, for eggs and won't disclose its inventory
levels. This egg gathering is done as it fulfills a contract with Spain for
cloning the endangered bucardo mountain goat.

Drawing lines is difficult because of our addiction to exceptions born of
rationalizations: "Just this once," or "It doesn't really hurt anyone." But
ethics is drawing lines. Embezzlers don't wake up one morning and decide to
forge a $600,000 check. They start with the office postage meter and
rationalize their ways to six figures.

Drawing lines in stem-cell research is particularly tough because this is not
an evil vs. good dilemma. There is the good of preserving life vs. the good
of saving lives. But, the latter requires the taking of life to accomplish.
Good intentions do not always result in good actions, means or ends. See,
e.g., welfare programs and athletic scholarships.

Mr. Bush violated a cardinal rule, as it were, of ethical analysis: Never
resolve an ethical issue if it's avoidable. The biotech industry has a
history of overstatement. We're still waiting on promised fetal tissue
miracles. These businesses oversell potential and progress. Stem cells
injected into mice with tremors seem to make the mice better. But it is one
gigantic leap from rodent to mankind. This alleged utilitarian decision and
compromise is based on miracles never realized and reached before other
avenues, such as adult stem cells, are fully explored.

The Bush decision is more disconcerting because of its monetary roots.
Behind the Christopher Reeve, Nancy Reagan and Orrin Hatch vaudeville show is
a biotech industry waiting with IPOs that will rival the dot-com boom.
There's gold in them thar Petri dishes.

These companies are using parents, children, relatives of Alzheimer victims
and even Mary Tyler Moore to shill for high finance in the name of
compassion. Don those lab coats and goggles to make ready for the biotech
boom. Desperate humans paying whatever it takes to survive as biotechs stand
at the ready with option-holding executives. Biotech stocks jumped 28%
following the Bush pronouncement.

But federal tax capital comes through politicians. Mr. Bush had
contributions from executives of biotech firms such as Amgen, Biogen and
Genzyme. Pro-life Senator Orrin Hatch's bizarre advocacy for this research
and his expressed disappointment with President's Bush's restraint is easily
explained. Seven of Mr. Hatch's top individual contributors are health and
pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry was his #2 contributor
in 2000.

The decision was bad enough; the money ties are embarrassing. Having
made it through the Vietnam era with nary a protest or arrest, it is a
surreal experience as I near 50 to become a subversive for life that hangs in
the balance because stem-cells enter the capital markets via campaign
contributions to those who sold out so easily. Thoreau wrote, "The
government stands for what appears to be expedient or practical, but not
necessarily for what it moral." Cue skulls. Roll tumbleweed. Enter
Walden.

JWR contributor Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State
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